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I read the reference article, and it lacks details, so it's hard to tell what's really going on from its content. The residue left on the sea floor isn't oil, it's the heavy fractions left after bacteria biodegrade the light fractions. I think it's important to recall that oil floats on water. Therefore "oil" we see on the bottom is no longer "fresh" oil, it's biodegraded oil. If you have been to a Florida beach, you may have got some of this biodegraded oil stuck to your feet - we call it beach tar.
So, this oil from the BP well came out at high speed, the oil drops were partially consumed by bacteria, who like to eat the lighter hydrocarbons (they love natural gasoline if it's waxy). The heavier stuff, the tar, then starts to sink. When it gets to the bottom, in 5000 feet of water, it's mighty dark, and cold, and the pressure is very high. So the tar particles, which stick to very fine sediments, get as hard as a rock. And this isn't what the bacteria like to eat - bacteria don't go for asphalt like stuff sitting in 36 degrees F. My guess is this stuff sitting in deep water will be there forever, and it'll be gradually covered as more sediment comes in via the Mississippi river (which is always dumping sand and mud on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor).
I read some of what Joye was saying in the past, so I gave her a call (I work as a business consultant and some of my clients are oil companies). I found her to be quite evasive when I tried to get into the details. She has also failed to publish hard data. My impression is Joye is using the event to blow her own horn, she found a niche, and she's using it to get famous.
The BP oil spill was real, bad things did happen and do happen, and the culprits need to pay, but this pseudo science and faulty reporting remind me of the Iraqi WMD stories before we invaded Iraq. Our media, alas, has very low quality reporting, the reporters don't even know how to ask the right questions, have a tendency to editorialize rather than report, and the end result is garbage. This is what we see in nearly everything today, just garbage. For quality coverage about anything, I recommend al Jazeera rather than anything in the US. But most of you are not able to watch it, it's censored in the US.
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